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“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”
-H.L. Mencken
Publisher's Note: I'm currently updating and revising my compilation of essays to which I will add an additional 300 pages (approximately) to the current book on Amazon and it will still be available at the very cool low price of $2.99. It is currently only available as an eBook. Amazon has revolutionized the world in more ways than one by circumventing the government supremacist gatekeepers in the big publishing houses. Once my esteemed editor is finished, I will plug it into Scrivener and compile it properly. I also maintain a Twitter presence at @Zero_Gov and you're welcome to follow.
I have become an "occasional regular" (is there such a thing?) with my abolitionist friends at the Freedom Feens. Michael Dean is Feen6 and he runs a "teaching hospital" for high quality audio podcasting. I recommend listening. -BB
Zero Gov has a forum. The blog is a terrific vehicle for…a one way conversation. Mind you, I love the replies and welcome them but the forum allows readers and editors to be much more expansive and interactive. Unlike the brevity haiku of Twitter or the seemingly one-way scribblings on a blog, it allows much more Socratic drilling and deep philosophical exchange. There are 31 sub-forums once you become a member not the two that appear for guests.
I am hoping that most everyone will channel Socrates and discover that, at times, the questions are more...

"But for Joseph Stalin, it was also a good war. From his pact with Adolf Hitler he annexed parts of Finland and Romania, and three Baltic republics. His armies stood in Berlin, Prague and Vienna; his agents were vying for power in Rome and Paris; his ally was installed in North Korea; his protege, Mao, was about to bring China into his empire. But it was not so good a war for the inmates of Kolyma or the Russian POWs returned to Stalin in Truman's Operation Keelhaul."
- Patrick J. Buchanan

Today is the 71st anniversary of D-Day. My father soldiered in WWII toward the end of the conflict and with the advent of VE Day in April 1945, was getting ready to ship to the Pacific to invade mainland Japan. Fortunately, that got turned off and he instead exercised Patton’s horses in Germany and returned to the states in one piece. Almost. The experience rippled through his life until he died in 2013.
On reflection, despite the nonsense about the Greatest Generation and other such self-congratulatory back slapping, the end of the war quickly devolved into a bipolar world which would eventually find hundreds of millions living in slave states in the East and slave state aspirants in the West vying to see who could outdo the USSR in economic illiteracy and the adoption of socialism as the formative building block of government and society. WWII supported the grand illusion that immoral means could yield moral ends, an impossible moral equation.
It is the greatest generation in one dismal sense; it may be one of the greatest spontaneous generations of maximum states planet-wide.
Like all wars, the US government used this as an opportunity to pile on confiscatory tax measures and other population control measures that far outlasted the actual hot war. This would include Milton Friedman's income tax withholding.
"However, both sides agreed on the need for high taxes (along with heavy borrowing) to pay for the war: top marginal tax rates ranged from 81%-94% for the duration of the war, and the income level subject to the highest rate was lowered from $5,000,000 to $200,000. Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully, by executive order 9250, to impose a 100% surtax on after-tax incomes over $25,000 (equal to roughly $340,721 today). However, Roosevelt did manage to impose this cap on executive pay in corporations with government contracts. Congress also enlarged the tax base by lowering the minimum income to pay taxes, and by reducing personal exemptions and deductions. By 1944 nearly every employed person was paying federal income taxes (compared to 10% in 1940)."
The American political world after WWII or the War to Save Josef Stalin to more accurately identify why the conflict took place, used the “Communist menace” to buttress the incredible growth of the American and Western European state; ironically emulating many of the worst aspects of central planning and citizen control. At least the French, British and Italians were honest enough to have significant voting blocs of self-avowed communists in their countries while the same were hounded in America despite the child-like reverence for the power of the state demonstrated by both major parties in America. Ironic that the Soviets had penetrated the Roosevelt White House so thoroughly in WWII. As the Democrat party started to evolve into the Socialist International after 1968 and the Grand Old Politburo stumbled behind with its incoherent statist/progressive agenda, the US became the Olympic Gold winner in the new era after the USSR simply just fell apart in 1989-91 getting the Silver Medal to build the bigger state.
The US was a hairs-breadth away from staying out of what was essentially the next phase of WWI if Lindbergh had defeated the odious and bloody-minded FDR in 1940. The America First Committee boasted almost a million members and wielded considerable influence on the dissenting voices. After eight years of clownish performance and a slobbering devotion to socialist and fascist ideas, FDR still secured the majority of the vote from the American booboisee and quickly set the groundwork to get the US involved in the European war and the Pacific war in the larger sense.
One can see that if WWI had not been entered by the US, the whole sordid chain of events that led to the advent of WWII may have been avoided. The sealed train to Russia to inaugurate the conflicts of the Red and White armies that would fight until 1923 would not have transpired and the ambitions of Hitler would have been crushed before they even started by the limited victories of the Central Powers and the absence of a Versailles Treaty that cruelly set the conditions for future slaughter and mayhem.
The subsequent seizure of the White House by avowed socialist revolutionaries in 1933 would march hand in hand with the rise of Hitler and Mussolini learning at the knee of Josef Stalin and his more murderous but frankly more honest campaign to enslave his nation and others.
The entry of America in WWII in concert with the Communist menace in the USSR, married at the hip, to make the world safe for the savage collectivism that was the joint vision of the Allies to include Churchill and De Gaulle was a prophecy fulfilled. At the time of the landings at Normandy celebrated on this day, it was a mere sideshow compared to the gargantuan land-borne fights that had savaged the Germans and Soviets alike since the launch of Operation Barbarossa in 1941. While the Allies diddled in the Kasserine Pass being schooled in failure and loss and mounted glacially-paced campaigns on the Italian peninsula, the Germans and Russians schooled each other in the crushing of armies of men, hundreds of thousands of soldiers locked in mortal combat that would see plenty killed and millions injured and wounded away from the small sideshow at Normandy.
Not one American should have ever stepped foot on the European continent unless on a tourist passport. The rippling effects of the foothold and the eventual “liberation” of Europe from the National Socialists would merely usher in Hitler’s vision absent the liquidation of certain undesirable groups such as Jews, gays and Slavs. That liquidation would continue apace in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. One would be hard pressed to look at the NSDAP platform of the Third Reich and not find most of its ambitions accomplished in the European states after the war and then rocketing to prominence in the modern socialist entity of the European Union.

Publisher's Note: I am a resigned life member of the NRA. I am a non-voter. I think the Constitution is a diabolically clever instrument to make a slave people think they are free. I am in favor to the total decriminalization and deregulation of all weapons systems across the Fetid Plain. There is not a weapons law on the books at any level of government in America I support. The only disarmament program I can get behind is all statist badged armed employees should be totally ungunned of all lethal and non-lethal systems until all government police forces are disbanded nation-wide. Things would be sporty, for about an hour.I have confined this analysis to Republican mischief at the Federal level and not the dishonorable disarmament efforts at the state level which deserves their own examination. I also explicitly say private weapons because Republicans have a child-like reverence for the power of the state and provision an unlimited number of arms to government agents of every stripe at the drop of a hat and using someone else's money. Their undeniable love affair with the warfare state has metastasized into an orgiastic passion for all things badged government agent domestically. -BB

“Black men with rifles marched into the state capitol building in Sacramento. In response to that, a bill was passed which became California’s first gun control law and eventually became the model for a national gun control law. So the (Black) Panthers were really the first gun rights movement. And the response to them — which was, by the way, a Republican response, authored by a Republican Congressman and Ronald Regan who was governor at the time...”
– Historian Thaddeus Russell

[ Editor's Note: The first weapons prohibition law in California would be in 1854: “On March 21, 1854, Assembly Bill 80 was passed, making the sale of firearms and ammunition to “Indians” a misdemeanor.”]
Philosophically, your stance on gun ownership tells me a lot of what your position is on freedom. If you’re a weapons prohibitionist, you tend to be a coercionist and government supremacist.
I dedicate this essay to the fruitless enterprise of voting and hope to show the Republicans or friends who are that the Grand Old Politburo is just as anxious as the Democrats to disarm you. Of course, the post-Second American Revolution Democrats have become a party of weapons prohibition but like all apparatchiks they consistently play philosophical whack-a-mole to plug new holes emerging in the totalitarian dike that separates Helots from their freedom. Two left wings of the same predatory bird.
At least the Democrats are honest enough about their economically illiterate Orwellian love affair with the Leviathan state since the 1930s.
I would suggest that the only difference between the parties is the spelling and nothing else. Both parties are death cults intent on piling on more and more freedom destroying regulations, laws and edicts that smother every ember of freedom that pokes out of the long-dead scorched earth of liberty that the government has firebombed since 1791.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the limited government apologists mewling about the GOP protection of gun rights and I wish to put that fabrication to rest. The Republicans hate atomistic ownership of weapons as much as the Democrats. Just their consistent hero worship of the cop class and constant fellating of the police state should be enough but it is not. I will destroy the perception in detail.
Let’s establish something. You can’t own a thing unless you control it. You don’t own your house even once you pay the mortgage because unless you pay your tribute to local taxing authority, your home will be seized. In America you lease everything from the government and in the case of guns from the Federal government. Unless you managed to be smart and get all your guns off paper and never used a 4473 to buy them, you are on a list. A confiscation list because that is what all registration does. registration just makes the follow-on seizure more bureaucratically efficient. Ask both the holders of gold and German Jews in the 1930s. They were both victims of government seizure via registration.
Federal Firearms Licenses (FFL) are simply extensions of the BATFE; gun stores are non-funded field offices of the ATF much like banks are non-funded informant networks that report to the IRS. Interesting that the 4473 is a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendment being used to deny the alleged Second Amendment protection. But then again, the Constitution was built to be a predatory doomsday machine to create the largest government the planet has seen in recorded history.
The whole notion of the Second Amendment is a sham and a chimera. I’ve spoken on this at length before and won’t bore you with the details here. A conditional right subject to voiding by the mob and their executors in the government is no right at all in any sense. The endless carping and mewling by gun owners and organizations may give the illusion of controlling the debate but the fat lady has already sung. In the sense that a bird doesn’t know what its wings are for since it spent its life in a cage, my notion that I should have free and unrestricted commerce in all weapons to include fully automatic weapons, suppressors, grenades and anything found on the arms market today is received by the Elmer Fudd gun owners as sheer lunacy. Cash and carry, no registration or licensing. None. But…but…but…what about the children as they run screaming to the nearest coproach to inform on their fellow Helot. Again, registration is simply a necessary precondition to confiscation and seizure.

I have written about the cop plague in America for years and a number of readers have asked to see all the essays compiled in one place. Alas, I have written so many I can’t keep track of them but if an enterprising reader were to take the time to catalog them, I’d be happy to put them in one place along with the media appearances where this grisly subject is entertained. You'll find a brief summary of some of them at the end of this essay.
I’d like to make several new observations.
It bears repeating: immoral means do not yield moral ends and don't hit and don't steal is a maxim that benefits everyone except the badged thug-scrum class in the US. Terrorism is the use of threatened or actual violence against innocents to achieve political ends. If that ain't policing in America, I don't know what is. Absent violation of the Ten Commandments daily, the practice of terrorism and the liberal application of wood shampoos on the slightest pretense, what would cops do? The government will never stop creating malum prohibitum crime; it is its bread and butter in power accrual and revenue aggrandizement.
The apparent revelation that cops are more savage and murderous today than past eras is patently false. The primary difference today is the sheer abundance of video and audio footage that consistently demonstrates not only the barbaric behavior of cops but the national sub-culture of lying, document fabrication and collusion with other government elements in the massive American penal complex for whom cops are the primary entry agent for screening potential inmates or corpses. I find the tactic innovative and revealing of releasing the video footage after the official reports are filed by the cops. How do you know a coproach is lying? His mandibles are moving. A two for one in that you prove both the deceit and the malice in one fell swoop.
Since 1972 and the coincident increase in the size and reach of the Federal government in concert with the Drug War, the police state started to metastasize into the cancer it is today. The increasingly militant foreign policy planet-wide after the fall of the USSR in 1989-1991 started to transition the American policing institutions from the petty savagery of localized thuggery to the more sophisticated militarization that has permeated copdom since then. This has been enhanced by Pentagon "leasing" arrangements of military equipment to unleash on the tax Helots, much of it unaccounted for.
The emergence of the Malum Prohibitum State married the coercive monopoly of the Federal government to all its satraps in the 19,000 government-policing jurisdictions throughout the United States. Some worthies of late have expressed fear at the emerging calls for a federalization of all police forces in America. Too little and too late, they are de facto and de jure Federalized since that Drug War inauguration in 1972 but I would date the beginning of this Federal takeover of law enforcement to the adoption of the Volstead Act in 1919. When this is combined with the absurd Palmer Raids and vicious Wilsonian American Protective League, you have the recipe for the unlimited functionality and bleating of every state – national security apparatchik for more laws and powers confined to the Only Ones. This hue and cry gives carte blanche to any government to crush every aspect of individual liberty for the protection of the herd. Thus the new charter of the FBI has become just that.

Publisher’s Note: I’d like to thank my former student, Douglas Bryant, for the ideas that inspired this essay. -BB

“Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you're thinking in order to make your thinking better.”
- Richard W. Paul
“Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.”
- Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

War and conflict are about angles both kinetically and philosophically.
Parallax is the change or movement in the appearance of an object that occurs when viewing it from different perspectives. The parallax gap exists where the differences between two points of view cannot be bridged: where no coherent whole can make sense of both perspectives. Below, I extend the metaphor of the parallax gap to elucidate two failures in contemporary counterinsurgency warfare and in the larger framework, the neo-imperialist project of the West.
The first is a gap between the ethical norms of the citizens of the United States and the types of conflicts they believe they can solve with military power. The second gap is that between the counterinsurgency goal of gaining the support of the population with a better narrative than that offered by the insurgency, and the religious mind of the true believer and circumstances of average civilians for whom that narrative is not a live option.

The First Gap

Why is it that Saddam Hussein was able to prevent civil war in Iraq while the US could not do so before the surge and may not be able to now that Operation Iraqi Freedom has ended and Operation New Dawn has begun? The short answer is that Saddam Hussein was willing to do things that the United States is not—things the US considers to be unethical and therefore unacceptable. Yet. The US limits its military options by its ethical norms, and it is not unique in doing so. However, it may be the case that there are certain conflicts in certain areas that the US cannot win with these limitations, and this possibility remains largely unacknowledged in the US. This should inform the nomenklatura in the US foreign policy and offense establishment on the ultimate feasibility of many of the conflicts it engages in and fights it picks. On the contrary, American faith in the military to win all conflicts is entrenched.
This, in spite of a track record of dismal failure in all its overseas adventures since the end of TheWar to Save Josef Stalin. One might also note that the Allied victory in WWII was a result of the wholesale commitment of Roosevelt’s precious Communist state in defeating the Axis powers. If you doubt the Soviet contribution to Japanese defeat apart from the Western sideshow starting in June 1944 on the Continent, take a look at the astonishing calculus of forces arrayed in August 1945 in the Russo-Japanese War II commencing on 9 August 1945 and culminating in a devastating defeat of Japanese forces. One wonders at the astonishing coincidence of these army operations within days of the dropping of the American atomic bombs. But a look at the deep penetration of the American executive decision complex established by both active Soviet agents and useful idiots in the foul and corrupt Roosevelt administration may offer some insight into how that could happen. I would also suggest that the nuclear decimation of the two Japanese cities was a signal to the Soviets about a new boss in town by Truman more so than a bargaining mechanism to get the Japanese to surrender. The Japanese had been seeking a conditional surrender since January 1945.

Publisher's Notes:John and I have been friends for several years and I highly prize his counsel in history and weapons lore. He and I have a propensity for indulging in the arcana of tactical details and interesting TTP of bygone eras.Please enjoy his great reading of the rebellious life of MAJ Redmond. This appeared in Forward Observer magazine for which he and I are both writers. -BB
One participant in the Southern Mountains’ Revenue Wars’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries stands out. He has been described as the most famous man of whom you’ve never heard. He epitomizes Appalachia’s resistance to unjust authority. Not only did he essentially lead a war of evasion of which the likes of John Rambo would be proud, he lived to tell about it. Redmond is a shining example of the state-repellant qualities of the southern mountains.
The man who came to be known as “King of the Moonshiners” life is partially shrouded in myth. Accounts of his life vary greatly, largely because he was a leading cause du jour of fictitious dime novels of the 1870’s and 80’s, but the basic facts of his exploits remain true.
Lewis Redmond was most likely born in the northern corner of Georgia where it meets Western North Carolina on the eve of the War of Northern Aggression in the 1850’s, although some sources claim he was born in Swain County, NC. By 1856 the Lewis family had relocated to what is now Transylvania County, North Carolina. Lewis was obviously too young to join the war effort in defense of his southern homeland but his brothers reportedly served in the Confederate Army under Col. William Holland Thomas in his Legion of Highlanders and Cherokee. Lewis Redmond wasn’t actually a Major, but he did get that nickname while hanging around Confederate camps as a teenager.
Redmond was a product of the times. A time of guerrilla insurgency and resistance of an occupying army, with lines blurred between combatants and non-combatants. Mixed loyalties further fueled the fires, and ultimately Reconstruction was more than many people could take. Also thrown into the mix was a newly enacted federal tax on distilled spirits instituted to help pay federal war debt. A tax that criminalized a practice that mountaineers considered a sacred birthright that was handed down from generation to generation. The market rate for a gallon of corn whiskey in this period was around 1.10$ a gallon. The federal government’s excise tax on this product was $.90. (Raised to 1.10$ in 1894) Farmers in the mountains had the choice of either selling a bushel of corn for 50 cents, or turning that bushel of corn into 3 gallons of whiskey, which was easier to transport. It cost a farmer 10$ to haul 20 bushels of corn to town that sold for around 8$. The tax was more than people could take. It was a complete assault not only on their natural liberty, but their livelihood. And this all came at a time of military rule and the tax was viewed as nothing more than a tool of domination by the Northern State to further deny Home Rule to the besieged mountain dwellers. Mountain people slowly declared an all out declaration of refusal and used violence in defense of their lives, liberty and sacred honor against an all out federal assault.
The federal response was further escalation. The Bureau of Internal Revenue soon was granted authority under the Force Act of 1871 to call federal military to their aid in enforcing their will on the southern mountain population. President Grant responded in kind by sending in the 7th Cavalry and men from the 2nd and 8th Infantry regiments to aid the federal tax collection effort. Bayonet rule of a conquered people vying for the last vestiges of freedom was in full swing. Soon the people had a figure to rally behind.
In the 1870’s Lewis Redmond labored on his families farm by day and ran illicit liquor at night. The federal liquor law enforcement arm soon caught wind of this and warrants were issued for the arrest members of the Redmond clan. Lewis’s recalled that his father was then arrested and carried to Asheville to stand trial. He claimed his mother died a few days after from fright and shock, and his father died on the trip to Asheville from exposure.
The event that happened next threw the story into over drive. Later on a mountain road in the East Fork Section of Transylvania County, NC, the Revenue men caught up with Lewis Redmond and his colleague Amos Ladd. (Brother of Redmond’s future wife) Deputy Marshal Alfred Duckworth stopped Redmond and attempted to arrest him for the ‘crime’ of making and trafficking illegal and untaxed distilled spirits. There is speculation surrounding the event. The most likely story is that the agent did not have the arrest warrant in his possession at the time and when Duckworth attempted to apprehend Redmond, he defended himself, ultimately shooting Duckworth in the throat. Redmond and Ladd escaped, Duckworth fell dead shortly after, during the chase. Even though the mountain people viewed ridding the world of a revenue agent to be akin to killing a copperhead, federal authorities saw it differently.

"God knows I detest slavery but it is an existing evil, and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution."
- Millard Fillmore

In this day and age when human beings have access to an unlimited fountain of human knowledge vertically and horizontally, one would think that slave people who are told they are free would know the difference. Not so, the government academic complex has been incredibly adept informing legions of both useful idiots and spirited scribblers and talking heads that are happy to massage the message. If one were a bird in a cage since birth, how in the world would you know what your wings are for? Much has been written on the terror of overtly totalitarian societies and various observers from across the accepted political spectrum have thrown barbs at one another over who lords over the worst measure of society.
The worthies in command would have you believe in the nonsense of Left and Right and everything in between, the apocryphal battle between fascism and communism in the twentieth century culminating in the West ironically winning the second half of WWI, the War to Save Josef Stalin, and making the planet safe for communism and the concomitant reaction of Western elites to build garrison states of their own to protect their subject populations from something…
There is no Left and Right but there are coercionists and individualist of which the former must intervene in every human transaction to exist and be made whole and visible.
So let’s make clear what our definitional constructs are before we begin the examination. The Cambridge English Dictionary has the following quaint definition of slavery.
…the condition of being legally owned by someone else, or the system in which some people are owned by others.
What is this notion of ownership?
Ownership is a condition of possession. If one lives in a nation state, you can be abducted at any time by the police authorities who are the pointy end of all political policies. There is a reason modern policing in America is originally a 19th century artifact of slave patrols powered by the Federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. You will note that this Act was merely an updated treatment of the same act from 1793 (I will note this is a mere two years after the ink is dry on the wretched Constitution).
Yet another reminder that the Constitution not only codified slavery but used government money to equip the patrols to repatriate the "human property". Read Section 3 and 4 of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 to really get your government muscle on. This was approved on 12February 1793 with 48 votes in favor and 7 against and 14 abstaining.

Passive protection. The ability to use non-violent means to defend yourself, much like the use of seatbelts or the active use of fire suppression devices. Objects in and of themselves that cannot harm others without a devilishly clever manipulation of the device(s). Imagine a country or class of people who finds these items not only offensive but threatening in and of themselves.
Hence the latest round of outrageously silly notions to outlaw the use of body armor by normal citizens and mundanes in America. Anyone not in the elect tribe of police or military or other accredited government groups who need the means to defend themselves from harm.
HR 378 seeks to ban possession of body armor for civilians in America. Yet another malum prohibitum law that is a solution in search of a problem. More cynical observers see it as a means for the government to make it even easier for modern American police to continue their killing spree they have been on for decades. The body of the bill makes no hint whatsoever of why this is such an important item to consider but knowing how the mandarins in DC works, this is something to be dusted off if the proper response to rampant police brutality ever emerges and yet another menu selection for the US legal prosecutoriat to use to throw people in dungeons for daring to resist the cascading predations on liberty by the central government.
Jay Syrmopoulos has done a nice job of pointing out the lethal silliness of the entire notion.

"The armor is purely defensive in nature, and people should always have the ability and right to defend themselves against attack.The right to self-defense is the right from which all other rights are derived. As John Locke stated, self-defense is the first law of nature. Each person owns his or her own life and no other person has a right to take that life, or hinder the preservation thereof.The Supreme Court has held that the police have no duty to protect citizens, so that responsibility now falls squarely on the shoulders of individuals themselves.To take away people’s ability to access defensive armor, after telling them that they are on their own and are owed no protection by law enforcement, almost seems like a cruel joke.Why should a law-abiding American, that takes steps to defend themselves passively, be criminalized?Interestingly, government employees and personnel who work for the various government agencies, departments, or “political subdivisions” are exempted in the bill."

You’ll even note in this FBI study that less than five percent of active shooters employ body armor and the storied incident in LA was more a function of extraordinarily poor police marksmanship than total protection of the perpetrators. Please note that the FBI has taken such a credibility hit in the last decade that one should examine the data and come to your own conclusions considering that the FBI will analyze the evidence to skew it in the government’s best interest which is always the people's worst. They have re-flagged their mission to national security and become a US variation of the Soviet Cheka in all but name now. This simply means the mask has dropped and one can see the true nature of the organization. This may explain its tendency to bait and switchhomegrown terrorist incidents. The antics have certainly tarnished the reputation of the agency but like all government bureaucracies they begin to believe their own fairly tales that their lives are sacrosanct and more important than the citizens in the feedlot they lord over. They begin to look at themselves as zookeepers.

"The United States Constitution provides that Congress "shall have the power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises ... but all Duties, Imposts, and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."

The Anti-Federalists were the enemies of the state and the Federalists were the champions of the omnipotent national state. This divide would animate the argument on how to govern North America below the Canadian border after 1783. But why then was the war fought? Why institute a system just as monstrous as the one they had just stumbled away from in London?
So, why, pray tell, did the British colonials seek a divorce and violently so after General Gage’s predations on arms and power in 1774-175?
So it begins:
Many causes emerged and these are certainly at the forefront:
 October 7, 1763 King George III proclaims a ban on westward migration in the colonies.
 April 5 and 9, 1763 Parliament passes the Sugar and Currency Acts
 March 22, 1765 Parliament passes the Stamp Act (even playing cards and dice)
 May 15, 1765 Parliament passes the Quartering Act of 1765
 March 18, 1766 Parliament repeals the Stamp Act and passes the Declaratory Act (asserting the authority of Parliament to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”)
 June 29, 1766 Parliament passes the Townshend Acts
 July, 1767 Parliament passes the New York Suspending Act
 April 21, 1768 The British Secretary of State for the colonies responds to the Massachusetts Circular Letter
 June 8, 1769 The British Secretary of State for the colonies orders General Thomas Gage to deploy forces to Boston
 March 5, 1770 The Boston Massacre leads to the death of five colonists
 November 2, 1772 The first Committee of Correspondence is formed in Boston, and produces Samuel Adams’ bold assertion of the “Rights of the Colonists,” and Dr. Joseph Warren’s “List of Infringements and Violations of Rights.”
 January 6, 1773 Massachusetts’ Governor Hutchinson argues the supremacy of Parliament before the General Court
 May 10, 1773 With the passage of the Tea Act, the East India Company is granted a virtual monopoly on the tea trade in the colonies
 March 31-June 2, 1774 The British Parliament passes the five Coercive Acts in order to punish Massachusetts for the Tea Party and regain control of the colony
 September 11, 1774 King George III commits Britain to a policy of intractable opposition to colonial claims.
This is not the complete list but simply highlights what one can find in the primary source documents but many of these simply overlook the day to day predations of the ruling class both English and later American weaponized by the governing instruments of the state.The Whiskey Rebellion was merely a homegrown version of reacting to the Coercive Acts under the British yoke. I would urge everyone interested to read further on these precursors to American Revolution I.
This is not comprehensive by any stretch but space demands brevity for the purpose of showing that the Constitution was simply a redux and improved imitation of Imperial law making from the mother country. This is why the Anti-Federalists were so horrified by the political coup in Philadelphia crafting the monstrous Constitution.
You will be shocked to learn by the end of this essay a legal precedent in 1792 that current band of legal brigands on the Supreme Court used to tax not only action but inaction (drawn from the chilling dissent by Thomas on the national socialist healthcare tax championed by Roberts).
Many Constitutionalists constantly badger everyone around them that the restoration of the document or a return to its origins will create a new yellow brick road where the government acknowledges and protects individual liberty at every turn and the central government in contravention of all human recorded history will remain small and vigilant of every predation on individual freedom.
Ad nauseum, the same parroting of nonsense learned in government obedience classes carefully and artfully disguised as civics class begun by a pledge to the centralizing instrument of mankind on the North American continent. The statist Tourette's syndrome that urges desperate men to paint history not as it was, but as they wish it to be.
I have covered various aspects of why the Constitution is a devilishly clever instrument to make a Helot people think they are free. Under Article VIII of the Articles of Confederation, the United States federal government did not have the power to tax. And on reflection, wisely so. As one will note from the quote at the top, the first order of business for the Constitution was into wrest the power of the taxing regime to the top of the political food chain.
Kenneth Royce does a brilliant book-length treatment of why the Constitution is so awful for free men and such a gift for grasping totalitarians.
So I simply want to treat the first ten years of the career of the document to show just how monstrous a predator on liberty it truly was. Many of these champions of the “original” document claim that the later distortions and license used by the executive, legislature and courts were merely deviations. I will establish they are a pattern from birth.
These are the same folks by the way who take the problematic Second Amendment seriously yet the record of infringement would occupy volumes to document. A brief 20th century tour of “infringement” would be the 1934 National Firearms Act, 1938 Federal Firearms Act, 1939, US v. Miller, 1968 Gun Control Act (egged on by Governor Reagan’s Mulford Act and the RFK assassination), Nixon’s call for a handgun ban in 1972, the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act, the Bushevik I import ban in 1989, AWB, Brady Bill, NICS, Bushevik II’s 2007 NICS Improvement Act and all the attendant nonsense in between and since.
Excepting Nixon’s imbecilic proposal, all the law of the land stamped and approved by all branches. All Constitutionally endorsed.
The Arkansas high court stars the ball rolling in 1842 in State v. Buzzard for this collectivist nonsense with guns. "That the words 'a well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State', and the words 'common defense' clearly show the true intent and meaning of these Constitutions [i.e., Arkansas and U.S.] and prove that it is a political and not an individual right, and, of course, that the State, in her legislative capacity, has the right to regulate and control it: This being the case, then the people, neither individually nor collectively, have the right to keep and bear arms."
And we have all heard that nonsense in the gun community for decades and nothing is new under the sun.

Publisher's Note:Virgil Văduva and I met several years ago and maintain the itinerant contact that is my specialty as an Aspie; very sparse and infrequent but he and my wife talk via Facebook all the time. No, I don’t have an account nor will I for a variety of reasons. When I met Virgil he struck me as extraordinarily intelligent and articulate and this essay simply proves the assertion. Enjoy. -BB

The truth is that I have been thinking about writing something along these lines for a while and I just now finally got around to putting the words on paper. Avens O’Brien, who is a wonderful young lady and a writer whom I met at the 2014 Liberty Forum in New Hampshire, wrote a piece titled “12 Reasons You Are Not Getting Laid by a Libertarian Lady.” It is a fun read, but I felt like it lacked the male perspective.

While this was written in jest, I am not holding much back here, so if you are wearing panties, I hope they will not bunch up in an uncomfortable knot. And while I often object to how language is being used (especially pronouns), using “we” or “us” or “you” is certainly not intended to speak on behalf of all libertarian men but it does make the discourse much easier to follow.
So here are my 12 reasons why libertarian women are not getting a good libertarian guy:

1. You are a feminist

Yes, you are a generation or two too late on the women’s rights scene. Just because being a feminist is trendy in libertarian circles, jumping on that bandwagon will not inspire men to invite you into their lives. In fact, it makes us turn around and run away from you. Modern feminism is a despicable, State-centered philosophy which yet has to gain much support from principled libertarian men. Libertarian men are rugged individualists and show little patience for anyone who wants an easy way into the market of ideas and feminism does little to substantiate your claim of being an independent, strong woman.

Progress of feminism over the year leads to blaming all men for all problems

We generally don’t give a shit about “equality” because there is no such thing and there will never be such a thing in a free market where moral authority is not enforced through violence. The free market is rude, it discriminates, it kicks you to the curb and knocks your teeth out. And if you cannot stand up, dust off your clothes and jump back into the middle of life, you will not be successful, no matter what gender you claim.
If you want equality (whatever that means), you have to earn it, whether we are discussing income level or job titles. And if you want equality right now, you can only obtain it by using the violence of the State to coerce others to create it, which means you are not exactly a libertarian woman, but just another boring, bitchy, liberal feminist.
Modern feminism is often being defended by confounding it with the classical feminist movement seeking to liberate women from societal norms where they were clearly being mistreated, marginalized and abused both mentally and physically. We are not going to fall for that argument, and riffing on the issue of “male privilege” will only cause us to roll our eyes and walk away from you.
Claiming you are a feminist will not inspire us to come into your arms and it is a total turnoff. Stop calling yourself a feminist and stick with “Libertarian.” We know what you mean.

2. You claim to love children but in reality you hate them

For the last few decades the age of couples having children has been going up, but the desire for children has not disappeared. The reality is that many libertarian guys would love to have children and have a successful family and home where they can live, grow and expand the sound principles of libertarian philosophy.
While the decision to have children is a very personal one, most men can handle a truthful statement along the lines of “I cannot stand children and I will never have any.” There is no need to play games or pretend you think children are wonderful when in reality you have no intention to like them, love them or have them.
Openness is one of the most basic foundations of a sound relationship and by not being honest with your feelings about children, you are only creating a revolving door for men in your life who want to have children but may walk away disappointed when they find out how you truly feel about them.
If you do not want children that is fine and a wonderful personal choice to make, but do not mislead your male partner on this issue at it is very important to many libertarian men. Be clear and be brutally honest about children so that the men who want children can walk away from you and find someone who is more compatible on this issue.

3. You assume that every man you meet wants to sleep with you

Just look at Avens’ article title: she implies that all libertarian men want is to get laid, when of course, that is simply not true.

Nope. Very funny, but not exactly true.

Just because you have a vagina, it does not mean that every man (or woman for that matter) you meet wants to sleep with you. Some may, but treating them all as if they want to get in your pants is both immature and arrogant. Some of my best friends have been females over the year, but that doesn’t mean I slept with all of them.
Being sexually intimate with another human being is a deeply personal decision, and not all men treat sex casually. Most of us respect our partners enough to discuss sexuality openly, so arrogantly assuming that all males drop their trousers down at the sight of a naked female body is not only a mistake, but it is an assumption that flows from the modern feminist idea that all men are sexual predators ready and willing to take a woman’s body as his own.
By respecting men in the same manner as you expect to be respected, you will create a foundation of trust in a relationship, regardless of what kind of relationship you are involved in. Whether you are male, female, single, straight, poly-amorous, gay or otherwise, all partners deserve to be treated with the underlying respect and assumption that there are no ulterior motives involved. So unless you are willing to ask all men you meet in clear terms “Do you want to fuck me,” I suggest that the expectation that all men you meet want your vagina, is wrong.

4. You do hurtful things

I guess this is not exactly a “libertarian thing” but it is possible that it happens in libertarian circles more often, mostly because women can outwardly have an attitude of independence, but manifest that independence in ways that are hurtful to her libertarian partner.
Assumptions can be made about employment, friendships with other men, relocation for a job, etc. An independent libertarian woman would consider all these factors but discuss them with her partner and ask for input instead of bulldozing through life without any care for others.
Do not hide your hurtful actions behind the curtain of making independent decisions as a strong woman. We are not falling for that either.

5. You are hearing men but not listening to them

Libertarians often like to discuss deep, important intellectual issues. Especially with other libertarians. But if we cannot find an audience we can become frustrated and seek out other outlets, such as passive-aggressive Facebook status updates or tweets.
The truth is that many libertarian men feel like women “do not get them.” This covers many areas and it has nothing to do with some perceived patriarchal superiority or privilege. Take the Bitcoin world for example. Virtually all Bitcoin developers, movers and shakers are men. This is not because libertarian women do not care about financial freedom or do not have the ability to participate in the discource, but they do not seem to care about participating in discussions related to the technical intricacies of the Bitcoin network. Of course there are exceptions, but it would be wonderful to see libertarian women actually listening to these issues and actively participating in the debate and taking an active role in solving problems.
Many libertarian men also like to discuss deep and emotional problems but are hesitant to open up to their partners about these issues, mostly out of fear of being ridiculed and being at conflict with the expected rugged individualism and independence.
If you do not want to push away your good libertarian men, do not just pretend to hear to them. Pay attention and listen to them just as you wish to be listened to as a female. We can be just as emotionally involved in a specific issue as you. Emotions and feelings transcend gender and by assuming that men should be tough-going and emotionless, you are just contributing to the established patriarchal establishment that you are criticizing.

6. You are a bitch

Being a bitch is not the same as being assertive or independent. Somehow these two characteristics have been conflated to have roughly the same meaning, but libertarian men can see through it and they don’t like it. Being kind, gentle and feminine is a value that many men adore and appreciate. Yes, it may be a violation of some unwritten principle of modern feminism, but as we established earlier, we do not care much about modern feminists.
Be kind and respectful to libertarian men, assuming they are kind and respectful to you. If we wanted to date and marry bitchy women, we could easily find them all around us. Instead we are looking for women who are willing to be both transformative but also transformed by a meaningful and deeply touching relationship. Yes, we realize that everyone has a bad day here and there but a constant attitude of being rude, obnoxious and nasty is not something anyone wants.
Libertarian men appreciate and value assertive women that have strong personalities. Learn to differentiate between these two characteristics and you will discover respect and acceptance for what you have to offer, not just based on gender alone. A good relationship is a two-way street where both partners grow and help each other become better human beings, better libertarians or better parents.

7. You think men should care about all your opinions

Here is a world-shattering thought: not all your opinions matter to us and they are not all important! Some matter, but many do not. Life and relationships are largely based on the compatibility of opinions, ideas, paradigms and thought patterns, but that is not always the only way to approach relationships.

Now you know

What if you just look for a libertarian man that makes you happy instead of looking for a libertarian man that will just agree with everything that is coming out of your mouth? If receiving nods for verbalizing opinions is your goal, you will easily get that from men wanting to just take your clothes off. But libertarian men are more principled than that. We care about making you happy as much as we care about being happy ourselves.
As a libertarian woman, you should stop looking for men to validate all your opinions or thoughts. We honestly don’t really care about everything you have to say. We care about some of the things you have to say but we care even more about being happy and treated respectfully, and that will materialize in us treating you the same way.

8. You are too much into how you look

Libertarian men tend to not really care about how much effort women put into their looks. As I’ve said before, we care about your minds and souls more than we care about the amount of make up you put on or the brand of shoes and purses you are wearing. Yes, those things are nice add-ons in life and they contribute to bettering ourselves but they are not what our lives revolve around.
Rather than spending an hour every day putting on makeup to impress libertarian men that may not care about it, an hour-long conversation over tea or coffee discussing Rothbard’s take on decentralized free-market solutions to arbitration sounds a lot more sexy.
Julie Borowski is making some excellent points below. If you disagree with her I really do not care.

9. You may just not be smart enough

A majority of libertarian guys are intelligent, well-educated, have a high income and are well-read. We like to meet and hang out with smart women. Being well-read and having the ability to discuss current issues in depth is a huge turn-on for many of us. The topic could be anything from thermodynamics to cryptography or crypto-currency, but we love discussing these issues. Especially with women.
Rather than complaining about how men own the technology sector, it would be much more enticing to become well acquainted with these topics and be smart about them. If you already are, that’s wonderful. Offer solutions to the issue of the SHA algorithm being a potential threat to the long term viability of current crypto currencies. Or perhaps talk about the ratio of helium to hydrogen that is being created in some stars. Or the anthropological effect that Austrian economics would have on our society during an economic collapse.
Smart geek talk is a huge turn on for many libertarian men, mostly because a majority of us work in technical fields and is what we could be doing for a living.
We care a lot less about the brand of eye-liner you are using than you being interested in good writing, reading or participating in fascinating discussions. The eye-liner gets washed away every night while conversations that help us expand our minds do not fade away easily.

10. You are hitting on married men

The libertarian movement is made up a wide-range of people, including many married libertarian men. Flirting with them is not exactly the best way to bridge whatever gap there is in you life. Yes, in life we all participate in an innocent flirt here and there but once it is becoming inappropriate, perhaps the honest thing to say to him is, “I want you to sleep with me!”
If you cannot come out and outright verbalize what your goals are to a libertarian man, then you are doing it wrong. We are not stupid. We get all the sexual innuendos, the jokes, and implications following. I believe that none of this is helpful or healthy to your own life and relationships. Why not come out and speak your mind about what you want from another person?
While their lives are far from perfect, married libertarian men are very dedicated to their family life. Unless there is some other voluntary agreement in place that may allowed for other sexual partners to partake, flirting with them is very inappropriate and does little to help you find a partner that works for you.
Be honest about your goals. There is nothing wrong with approaching strangers for discussions just because they are physically attractive, but be aware of where that line is and when you are about to cross it because when it is crossed you become just another horny woman looking for an easy fling.

11. You are too clingy

Yes, many libertarian women love to throw the “I am independent” claim in people’s faces but in reality they are just as clingy if not worse than most women out there. If you are dating a good libertarian guy, outline your expectations from the beginning and leave it at that. Draft a contract if you have to but be very clear in your expectations, regardless of what they are.
Calling him or texting him every 30 minutes to check out on him, reading his e-mails or demanding an explanation of all his female Facebook friends is not a way to keep him around. Libertarian men value their own privacy as much as they value your privacy and there is the right way and the wrong way to promote trust in a relationship.
If you are too clingy, maybe a libertarian man who expects to have multiple partners in the relationship is not your best choice. Obviously the same goes for you. If you expect to have a sexual-only relationship or have multiple partners, perhaps clearly explaining that to your libertarian man would be a good idea. Explain it early, not after you violate his trust.

12. You cannot cook

Oh wow, Virgil, how dare you even touch on the issue of women in the kitchen, you say?
What is the problem with a partner’s expectation to have the basic ability to cook a decent meal? The modern libertarian man does not expect his partner to be in the kitchen all day, every day, and most libertarian men I’ve met are excellent cooks. In fact a vast majority of the best chefs in the world are men.
I love cooking for my family. It’s a sign of sacrifice, appreciation, love and a great opportunity to bring everyone together. I find it to be privilege. I have never seen it as a chore. Rather than seeing cooking as a demeaning activity (as it has been portrayed by the modern feminist movement), you should see it as an opportunity to hang out with your partner or family and have a blast doing it while feeding everyone a quality meal (hopefully).
If you cannot cook and see cooking as some conspiratorial agenda for men to keep women down and oppressed, do not be surprised when libertarian men will eventually get tired of eating microwaved meals and frozen dinners. Yes, it is not hard today for couples to eat all meals out in a restaurant all day, every day, but there is something very special about cooking and eating at home. It is an opportunity to show your independence and also teach it to the rest of you family or children.
A libertarian man will appreciate your quality cooking, not because he wants to put you down and chain you to the stove, but because he loves your independence and hopefully, creativity. And he will likely roll up his sleeves and cook with you because cooking can be a lot of fun.
I am certain that someone will find a way to misinterpret or take something I wrote the wrong way, but that is on you as a reader. If you can, take the positives and use them to improve your own lives. If you cannot, I still wish you the best and hope you will not learn the lessons of life by taking the wrong path too many times.
Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak. He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.